"Thus people can see it from several hundred kilometres away and often feel it is much closer," Gladman said.

Alan Hildebrand, an associate professor at the Univerisity of Calgary's department of geoscience, told BuzzFeed Canada the meteor was of a size and brightness only seen about once a year in Canada.

Based on videos people have posted, he said the rock had a mass of 1 to 10 tonnes. But after burning up and disintegrating into smaller pieces, the final meteorites would have been much smaller than that by the time they made impact.

"The biggest ones would probably be about the size of your head," Hildebrand said.